Three years after a tornado devastated the Little Rock suburb of Vilonia, its residents found themselves huddling in the dark early Monday wondering how they would rebuild again after the most powerful tornado yet this year carved a path through their city and others nearby, killing at least 16 people.

The tornado touched down Sunday about 16 kilometres west of Little Rock at around 7 p.m., then carved a 129-kilometre path of destruction as it passed through or near several suburbs north of the state capital, including Vilonia. It grew to be a 800-metres wide and remained on the ground for much of that route, authorities said.

Among the ruins was a new $14 million intermediate school that was set to open this fall.

"There's just really nothing there anymore. We're probably going to have to start all over again," Vilonia Schools Superintendent Frank Mitchell said after surveying what was left of the building.

'It's just shock that you lost everything'

The tornado was the largest of several produced by a powerful storm system that rumbled through the central and southern U.S. Another twister killed a person in Quapaw, Okla., before crossing into Kansas to the north and destroying 60 to 70 homes and injuring 25 people in the city of Baxter Springs, according to authorities in Kansas. A death was reported in Baxter Springs, but it wasn't yet known if it was caused by the tornado, making the Oklahoma death the only confirmed death from Sunday's storms outside of Arkansas.

The tornado that hit Arkansas didn't form until night was setting in, so the full extent of the damage wouldn't be known until after sunrise on Monday. The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Centre said more storms were expected Monday in the South and Mississippi Valley.

Motorists check out a tractor-trailer that was blown over by high winds from a severe thunderstorm that passed near Rich Hill, Mo., on Sunday. (Orlin Wagner/Associated Press)

The Arkansas twister shredded cars, trucks and 18-wheelers stuck along Interstate 40 north of Little Rock. After the storm passed, tractor-trailer rigs tried to navigate through the damage to continue their journeys, while gawkers held smartphones to their windows to offer a grim glimpse of the destruction.

State troopers went vehicle-to-vehicle to check on motorists and said with genuine surprise that no one was killed.

"About 30 vehicles — large trucks, sedans, pickup trucks — were going through there when the funnel cloud passed over," said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police.

Karla Ault, a Vilonia High School volleyball coach, said she sheltered in the school gymnasium as the storm approached. After it passed, her husband told her their home was gone — reduced to the slab on which it had sat.

"I'm just kind of numb. It's just shock that you lost everything. You don't understand everything you have until you realize that all I've got now is just what I have on," Ault said.

The country had enjoyed a relative lull in violent weather and didn't record the first tornado death until Sunday, when a North Carolina infant who was injured by a twister Friday died at a hospital. But the system that moved through the Plains, Midwest and South on Sunday produced tornadoes that struck several states, including Missouri, Nebraska and Iowa.

The weather service's North Little Rock office said it was virtually certain that the Mayflower and Vilonia storm would be rated as the nation's strongest twister to date this year.

"It has the potential to be EF3 or greater," said meteorologist Jeff Hood. EF3 storms have winds greater than 218 km/h. "Based on some of the footage we've seen from Mayflower and where it crossed Interstate 40, things were wrecked in a very significant way."

'Packed like sardines' in storm cellar

From communities west of Little Rock to others well north of the capital, emergency workers and volunteers were going door-to-door checking for victims.

"It turned pitch black," said Mark Ausbrooks, who was at his parents' home in Mayflower when the storm arrived. "I ran and got pillows to put over our heads and ... all hell broke loose."

"My parents' home, it's gone completely," he said.

'Your country will be there to help you recover and rebuild as long as it takes.'- U.S. President Barack Obama

Becky Naylor, of Mayflower, said she and her family went to their storm cellar after hearing that tornado debris was falling in nearby Morgan. Naylor, 57, said there were between 20 and 22 people in the cellar and they were "packed like sardines."

"Everyone is welcome to come into it," she said. "In fact, people were pulling off the highways and were just running in."

She said the men held the cellar doors shut while the tornado's winds tried to rip them open.

"It sounded like a constant rolling, roaring sound," she said. "Trees were really bending and the light poles were actually shaking and moving. That's before we shut the door and we've only shut the door to the storm cellar two times."

The other time was during the 2011 storm.

The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management raised the Arkansas death toll to 16 early Monday — 10 in Faulkner County, five in Pulaski County and one in White County.

The White House issued a statement in which U.S. President Barack Obama promised that the federal government would help in the recovery and praised the heroic efforts of first-responders and neighbours.

"Your country will be there to help you recover and rebuild as long as it takes," Obama said.

Storm ratings for Sunday's twisters were not immediately available. Before Sunday, the country had not had a tornado rated EF3 or higher since Nov. 17, streak of 160 days, the fourth-longest on record. This also would be the latest date for a storm rated EF3 or higher. The previous latest big storm for a year was March 31, 2002.

Sunday was the third anniversary of a 122-tornado day, which struck parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia and killed 316 people.

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